Settlement Expansion Under the Guise of Security

CORRECTION: both demonstrations start at 12pm tomorrow, and not 1pm as previously stated.

Settlement expansion under the guise of security- Two villages rise up against the wall tomorrow

[Ramallah District] The West Bank villages if Bil’in and Abud will both march to the construction sites of the Annexation Wall on their land Friday, November 25 at 12:00 PM. The Abud and Bil’in protest marches are part of the ongoing efforts of Palestinians to stop the destruction of their land and the ghettoization of their communities. Palestinians, joined by Israelis and internationals, have conducted almost weekly protests, marches, direct actions and other forms of civil resistance and disobedience since the beginning of the construction of the wall in 2002.

Abud, a village of approximately 2200 Christian and Muslim Palestinians, will lose over 4,000 dunams (about a 1,000 acres) of its land due to the route of the barrier. The route of the wall around Abud is designed to enable the unapproved planned expansion of the Ofarim and Beit Arye settlements. Both of these settlements are illegal under international law.

The village of Bil’in, now a symbol of persistent community organizing and cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis in the struggle against the wall, is losing over 60% of its agricultural land to the construction of the barrier. The route of the wall in Bil’in will de-facto annex the village’s farmland for the planned expansion of the illegal Modi’in Elite settlement.

Abud and Bil’in are not alone. According to a report from Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, “ the currently approved route of the Barrier leaves fifty-five settlements, twelve of them in East Jerusalem, separated from the rest of the West Bank and contiguous with the State of Israel. Study of a map of the route indicates that in most of the cases… the Barrier’s route was set hundreds, and even thousands, of meters from the houses at the edge of the settlements.”

The B’tselem report also shows that not only were security-related reasons of secondary importance to the Israeli government in certain locations, but that in cases where security concerns conflicted with settlement expansion, the planners opted to enable expansion at the expense of security.

For more information on the demonstrations, please contact: ISM media office: +972-(0)2-297-1824 or Abdullah AbuRahme +972-(0)547-258-210 END